A Necromancer's Guide to Grave Mistakes

If Ella had learned anything from grave robbers, it was that she only needed a hole big enough to drag out the head. Digging was the worst part—Ella was half a foot shy of the customary six-foot depth herself and couldn’t possibly manage to empty an entire plot before dawn. At least this time the dirt was still loose, likely owing to the superstition that treading the earth before a fresh marker stone caused ghost pox.

She flung a rain-soaked shovel of dark soil over the ledge, and the small gray mouse standing near the lip of the muddy pit coughed pointedly. Ella ignored him.

If Ella had been granted the position of High Cinder like her father wanted, she would have been standing alongside the grave with an army of kingsmen at her command. A lantern would lead her processional, and Ella would supervise, stately and dignified, as they dug up her late father’s scribe.

She would not be wearing a muddy frock and borrowed boots.

But Ella was not in the king’s employ, nor even the king’s favor, and her stepfamily had tried to make certain she never would be. So there she stood, shovel in hand, in a moonlit graveyard beyond an abandoned church on the outskirts of a kingdom that didn’t show her the slightest regard. And she would keep digging, with nothing more than a bitter grudge, a pair of censorious rodents, and a squat, slightly less censorious undead badger for company. In the rain, no less—which was not owing to any conspiracy or ill-treatment but was just poor timing.

The mouse chucked a pebble into the hole, then leaned forward dramatically as if listening for the plink at the end of the drop.

Ella paused in her digging to look at him, one hand planted heavily on her hip. “I have told you before, Fritz, and I will hold all progress to tell you again: attempts at rushing me will not get you out of the rain any faster. I have a job to do, and it takes skill and concentration, and no little amount of cleverness.”

A chunk of earth took that moment to slide from the ledge, its wet plop punctuating Ella’s declaration and spattering mud up the front of her pinned skirt and, somehow, directly into a nostril. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

Beside Fritz, Cybil released a chirp of laughter, and the pair exchanged a few quick gestures before chittering in unison as they performed a mocking imitation of Ella’s entire speech. Ella’s shovel slapped against the pooling water as the mice rolled across the grass, laughing. Magnus, the badger who had completed a good deal of their digging before the rain had begun, spat a half-chewed strawberry stem into the trampled grass beside him without comment.

Ella’s mouth set in a determined line. She was going to get the scribe out of the coffin so she could put things right by her father and never have to spend another moment thinking of the king, his court, or inheritance law ever again. And she was going to do it all without being thrown into the stocks.

It was a quarter hour later before the shovel edge thudded against a wood plank and longer still before Ella realized what a mess she’d made of it. An efficient grave robber would dig down to where the head was located and pull the body out without disturbing the whole site. Ella was neither a grave robber nor efficient. The only treasure the buried man held for her was information. Evidently, however, he’d been buried in the wrong direction because all Ella could reach were his feet.

She glanced at the badger where he watched from above with new interest. “Do you suppose this is merely the work of a poor burial or something more sinister?”

Magnus shrugged.

Ella knelt to peer through the hole she’d knocked in the thin wood. “Nothing to be done for it now.”

A brief shuffling noise was the badger’s only response before he tossed the rope down. Ella tied it around the man’s stockinged ankles, then climbed gracelessly out of the pit. At the top, she settled onto the ledge, braced her boots against the opposite edge of the hole, and pulled.

There was a mud-muffled thump as the man’s ankle came off and the rest of him fell the distance they’d gained. Ella leaned forward, she, Magnus, and the two mice squinting down at the body. Cybil chittered sage advice, which Ella promptly ignored. Ella did not have time for wisdom. She only needed not to get caught. Reaching into the pit, she looped the rope farther up the man’s leg, then hauled his body out of the hole by leaning flat on her back… where the corpse landed on top of her.

As Fritz and Cybil agreed that some humans were just too stubborn to be taught, Ella shoved the man’s body off her own, then knelt beside it. “There,” she said. “Not too worse for wear.”

Magnus gave her a skeptical look but was gracious enough not to glance toward the lone foot at the bottom of the hole.

Ella waved away the badger’s concern. “He’s better off up here than down there in any case.”

The corpse was heavier than Ella had expected. She’d only seen her father’s scribe briefly, from a distance and alive. She had not expected him to possess quite so much muscle. He wore the garb the king preferred for his close staff, an embroidered tunic and leggings, much out of date for current fashion. The undertakers performed a bit of magic of their own, preserving the appearance of the body a great deal, but it did nothing to restore things such as broken bone, and Mister Hicks had been struck by a fast-moving carriage. Fritz moved closer, searching the man’s neck for chains of office, while Cybil stood on her hind legs and sniffed the air before closing in.

When the pair finally finished their inspection, they decided the man smelled sufficiently of ink and parchment. The moon was high, her lantern was low, and the watch would soon make their rounds. Ella decided the assessment would have to be enough.

She stood, nearly slipping on the slop they’d made by digging, then drew the supplies out of her bag. Fritz and Cybil lined up beside Magnus, the lot of them taking on a more solemn air. It was not an easy thing to be dragged back from death, and no one understood the gravity of what was about to take place more than them.

Ella forced down a familiar pang of guilt at the thought, then laid her light cloak over the man’s missing foot before threading thin braided string between her fingers. Her voice was low when she sang the words upon the corpse inside the circle formed as she laid the string, and lower still when she leaned over to smear dark ash down his face and throat. She straightened, stepped back, and hoped very hard that the magic would work the way it was meant to.

“Stick,” she demanded.

Magnus lifted the hazel branch toward her. Ella took it without removing her gaze from the body. She continued the chant, dragging the tip of the branch through the damp soil to mark a wider circle around the rope.

Twine to keep him in. Hazel wood to keep her out.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but Ella’s hair and gown were heavy and dripping. When the circle closed, the cold damp was devoured by warmth, distinct and dangerous. Ella’s focus tightened on the corpse. The man’s throat began to glow like a coal beneath the bellows. It was where Cinders got their name. The magic directed through the hazel wood appeared like an ember on the charred tip. And the undertaking never became less momentous.

The glow raced outward, toward sternum and chin, then briefly flared before fading away. Ella spoke the binding word, and the spot that had glowed went unnaturally dark, cauterized.

The corpse coughed. No longer a living flame, but not entirely extinguished. Somewhere in between the living and the dead.

Ella glanced at the badger; his teeth were bared. She widened her stance, just a fraction, and wished she had worn better-fitting boots.

The corpse sat up, several clods of earth and what looked to be a ceremonial pin rolling off him to land on the ground.

“Good evening, sir.”

He blinked.

“It is so kind of you to assist me, and when the weather is so dreadful.”

He nodded sloppily, seemingly confused by her pleasant smile and conversational tone.

Ella did not release her gaze. “I wonder if you might be able to tell me your name.”

The man, for he was beginning to resemble such more by the minute, stared at her.

Ella shifted a step closer, her boots coming to rest right against the line in the sod. “What may I call you?”

“Henry,” he said, voice a bit rusty but intelligible enough. “Henry Hicks.” Then, “Why are you smeared in mud?”

“Henry,” Ella repeated, relieved that she had finally found her Mister Hicks. “I had an uncle named Henry. He lived in Dorchester for a time. Dreadfully rainy every time we visited. Some days it just feels like the rain follows me wherever I go.” She inched closer, coming to kneel before the demarcation so that she might face him directly. “Tell me, Henry, how long have you been in the employ of the king?”

“Since I was a boy. We’re one of the families he keeps on. Did you have a fall, miss? You’ve got mud…” He trailed off as if a gesture might have accompanied the words, though his arm did not move.

Ella adjusted the material of her skirt, proper-like, as if they were sharing evening tea before the fire and were not in a damp and moonlit graveyard. In her experience, conversation accomplished more than interrogation. “Can you tell me if you ever worked with Cinder Morgrave?”

The man’s full eyebrows drew together.

“He may have gone by the name Emeri. A friendly sort, but terribly distractible. Always so deep in his work. Tall, thin, sandy hair and sandy skin.”

His head cocked sideways a bit, possibly on purpose. “What would a Cinder want with me?”

“Well, scribe work, of course.”

“Miss”—the man looked slowly through the graveyard before his gaze came back to hers—“I’m a tinsmith.”

Ella’s stomach dropped. She tried desperately to keep the devastation wrought by his revelation from her expression; it was never a good idea to upset a newly unearthed corpse. Swallowing against the lump trying to overtake her throat, she asked, “Why would a tinsmith be dressed in the clothes of a king’s man?”

Henry tried a glance downward at said wardrobe, his neck wobbling perilously in the attempt as the magic and his body found equilibrium. “Oh. Erm…” He looked back toward Ella, one of his fragile hands lifting to roam over the fabric of his tunic. “These are Harold’s.”

“Harold?” Ella’s voice had gone shaky.

“My cousin.” The man pointed a finger somewhat loosely in her direction. “You think I’m Harold. Because he was the High Cinder’s scribe.”

Ella pressed her lips together hard, then drew a deep breath through her nose. She did not weep or wail or raise her head to shout at the sky. She did not pound her fists into the earth and stomp her feet. She said calmly, “I did think that the case, especially given the shared surname.” It was a bit too soon to mention that he’d been in another man’s grave. “And how, again, was it that you came to be wearing your cousin’s uniform?”

“Oh, that’s easy.”

Ella waited.

“It was on account of someone trying to murder him.” Henry’s expression fell, the finger he’d been gesturing with seeming to follow some invisible line of thought through the air. “Hang on.” He glanced once more at the churchyard, nothing much to discover except the pit behind him and a freshly carved marking stone, which, naturally, he did discover. The crown did not generally employ fools. Henry’s eyes met Ella’s, glistening in the moonlight and more alive than they had any right to be. “Is that why I smell of lilies? Have I—have you—” He emitted a sickly little mewling sound. “Aw, no, miss, no. You’ve gone and necromancered me.”

Ella crossed her arms, then forced them back to her lap in the most nonthreatening way she could manage, which was difficult given that she was nearly out of reach of her own self-control. And she had to keep herself in control, because when her emotions grew unruly, so did her magic. “Henry, I need you to stick with me on this for just a bit longer, please. Where is your cousin now? It is extremely important that I speak with him.”

Henry ran a hand over his breastbone, then made a horrified and accusatory face, perhaps because he realized there was no beating heart inside or because the bone was slightly askew. 

“How should I know? I was busy being dead.”

In the distance, a dog barked, and Ella hoped very much that the man she’d just awoken did not notice the two mice nearby having an animated discussion about how Ella was running out of time before the watch made their rounds. She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder; she’d been on edge since a tall copper-haired guard had watched her a little too attentively at the market the week before. Ella had not liked the way he’d looked at her.

She leaned closer, careful not to cross the boundary mark until she’d had time to anchor the man properly to her magic. “Henry. Where was Harold last?”

Drawing his eyes off the church in the distance, Henry said, “Don’t know. That was why the pair of us would switch clothes—so that Harold might be able to sneak away and meet secretly with Silas. Never told me where, just that someone was aiming to do away with him because he was a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

Henry shrugged. “Harold was too afraid to tell me, never mind that they might come after me too, should they think I was in on it, what with switching our clothes. But it had to be bad, didn’t it, for Silas to be wanting to meet with him.”

Harold being in hiding was a problem, possibly the worst problem that Ella had acquired since she’d dug up the wrong corpse. She had to find her father’s scribe so that she could drag the location of Emeri Morgrave’s last will and testament out of the man before the king picked the next High Cinder and Ella lost what little she had left. The scribe was more than her father’s assistant; he was the only reliably organized aspect of Emeri’s work. And he had been the last person to see her father alive. “Who was the someone aiming to do away with your cousin?”

Henry shrugged again, and his shoulder tipped at an unlikely angle. He did not seem to notice. 

“No one knew that yet, but Silas was trying to find out. He had a theory, and he had vowed to keep Harold safe. Can you imagine? All that trouble for a scribe.”

Ella sat back on her heels. There was something off about the awe in Henry’s tone, the way his eyes went all dreamy, and Ella did not like it one bit. The last thing she needed was anyone important—or worse, connected to the king or his court—to be tied to her problem. They would be duty-bound to report her. She would never succeed. She would be punished, and the closer the mess was to the king, the worse it could get.

“Henry,” she asked, “who is Silas?”

“Well, the king’s son, of course. Harold was being protected by Prince Silas himself.”